Relay Chain

The heart of Polkadot, responsible for the network’s shared security, consensus and cross-chain interoperability.

Parachains

Sovereign blockchains that can have their own tokens and optimize their functionality for specific use cases.

Parathreads

Similar to parachains but with a pay-as-you-go model. More economical for blockchains that don’t need continuous connectivity to the network.

Bridges

Allow parachains and parathreads to connect and communicate with external networks like Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Focused Solutions

The core team at Polkadot has identified issues with current blockchain technologies such as Ethereum. The project focuses on solving current issues that the blockchain community is currently facing. Below are some of the solutions that Polkadot offers.

Increased interoperability

You may have heard this multiple times if you are in the blockchain space — Interoperability.

Polkadot enables cross-blockchain transfers of any type of data or asset, not just tokens. Connecting to Polkadot gives you the ability to interoperate with a wide variety of blockchains in the Polkadot network.

Unique position

Polkadot’s ability to process and handle multiple chains at the same time provides scalability that is absent in many other chains. Its interoperability, scalability and versatility are some of the reasons why Polkadot is in a unique position.

Scalability

One thing Morpheus Labs appreciates is the inclusivity of ideas beyond the realm of their own ecosystem. Polkadot welcomes all dApps. This means that Polkadot bridges various blockchains projects and allows developers to increase their innovativity. Besides encouraging innovation, allowing other apps outside of their ecosystem, it makes Polkadot scalable.

The high interoperability of Polkadot allows users to mix and match, explore different possibilities, use different networks and programs, yet being able to run on Polkadot. As it is a sharded network, its scalability allows developers to conjure application solutions efficiently and securely. Polkadot’s unique position not only increases scalability, but also means cost savings, higher turnaround time, innovation and efficiency.

Security

Polkadot’s novel data availability and validity scheme allows chains to interact with each other in a meaningful way. Chains remain independent in their governance but united in their security. By virtue of design, Polkadot works to remove this impediment from the development process of new layers and applications. An abstract from Gavin Wood, co-founder of Polkadot –

“Bitcoin famously has the mining algorithm. I don’t know, it uses up the equivalent of, I don’t know, some small country’s energy simply in securing itself. Of course, the newer chains tend not to be proof of work, they tend to be proof of stake so they’re not using much energy, but they are using a lot of capital…that’s really one of the key problems that Polkadot solves, it allows the same capital base to secure many different domain-specific blockchains.”

Forkless & Future-proof

Polkadot can upgrade without hard forks to integrate new features or fix bugs. This capability enables Polkadot to easily adapt to changes and upgrade itself as better technologies become available.